


Better than Corkscrewing Eyeballs

by Princip1914



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Fluff and Crack, M/M, Shawn has An Emotion, abuse of moral philosophy, human suits used inappropriately, i don't make the rules, mild spoilers for Good Place Season 4 Ep 10, shawn is a naughty bitch, that part is canon, this was supposed to be fun and funny and then it turned into Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-22 09:42:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22247491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princip1914/pseuds/Princip1914
Summary: Michael and Shawn try a new way, together.Wherein: Crack is treated seriously, Shawn feels An Emotion (or several), neighborhoods are created, humans are tortured towards the light, and demons educate one another in moral philosophy
Relationships: Michael/Shawn (The Good Place)
Comments: 95
Kudos: 337





	Better than Corkscrewing Eyeballs

**Author's Note:**

> 4.5k of pure insanity, featuring actual academic philosophy papers that the author found and read in order to write this fic, based on two minutes of sitcom TV. That should tell you everything you need to know about this fic. Consider yourself warned. 
> 
> Also, apparently my brand is now reforming demons through the power of fiction. Figures.

“Ok, fine, you’re gonna make me admit it. Fighting you is the most fun I’ve ever had.” There, it was out now. Shawn curled his lips, trying to make the bad taste of telling the truth leave his mouth. He was unburdening himself to Michael--Michael of all demons!--telling him things he hadn’t even admitted in the deepest circles of hell, laying bare the bright satisfaction of finally having a nemesis to thwart after a trillion years of by-the-book butthole spiders and penis flattenings. 

“I’m not sure I’m ready for it to end.” Ugh. That was even worse, truth and sincerity together, with a little dash of the admiration that Shawn couldn’t force down. Coming out of his mouth, the words tasted the way a rainbow looked, that is to say, they made Shawn want to retch. 

Michael sidled a little closer in an understanding shuffle that was an insult to demons everywhere. “I know buddy,” he said, voice low, deep, rich, and comforting in a way Shawn hadn’t really noticed before. “It’s hard when things end. But one way or another, this is over. The only question is...what’s next?”

Shawn was sold already. Michael didn’t have to go on, flattering him about his speech at Demon Con, doling out annoyingly perceptive insights about Shawn’s motivations when he first let Michael experiment with this new neighborhood two revolutions of the Bearimy ago. 

“Let’s try a new way,” Michael said, still in that deep, slow tone of his, as if the Judge wasn’t seconds away from wiping this all out, as if they had all the time in the world to discuss this mad idea. Michael’s hand grazed the shoulder of Shawn’s person suit. A light touch, unexpectedly warm through the ugly tweed of Shawn’s coat. “Together,” Michael finished, a promise much more than a question. 

Shawn had known he was going to say yes, if he was being honest with himself (and he tried not to be on principle) ever since he had admitted to Michael that he found tormenting him fun.

“Fine,” Shawn grit out. And it was so much easier to say than he had expected. 

*****

What came next was this: a room. Four walls painted white. Four windows, each one looking out at a medium place that was displaying a different season of earth weather. Perfect winter. Crisp fall. A golden summer. Flowering spring. The ceiling had exposed rafters like a country cottage. There was a flagstone floor. The only furniture in the room was a large white drafting table with a matching lamp set in the dead center of the room, and two stools. 

The window overlooking the winter scene suddenly transformed itself into a door.

“You again!” Shawn gasped. Michael shut the door behind him, brushing perfectly formed snowflakes off the broad shoulders of his suit. 

“I thought I was supposed to be working with a Good Place architect, not a collection of Janet farts in a person suit!” Shawn hissed at him. 

“I know you Shawn,” Michael said, infernally calm. “And the Judge does too. You’d run circles around any Good Place architect we sent you with.”

“Point,” Shawn conceded, without an ounce of humility. Pride was one of the seven deadlies after all. 

“A thousand years with a Good Place architect, Shawn, and you’d have this place looking like the sixth circle all over again,” Michael sighed. “Even worse, you’d get bored. You can’t stand those driveling, committee making fools. And frankly, none of them wanted to work with you anyway. They’re terrified of you.” 

Shawn preened, then something important occurred to him. 

“You asked to be put with me, didn’t you? You asked the Judge to pair us up.”

“I did.” Michael set his briefcase down by the drafting table and began making himself at home on one of the stools. “I took one for the team, as it were. That’s a human expression, by the way.” 

“Don’t pretend you asked to work with me because you’re selfless, Michael.” Shawn was still standing by the table, excited despite himself. The familiar tingling of knowing he really had Michael in a way that would hurt tightening in his chest. “You think you’re sanctimonious, with your little band of human misfits, with your morality,” Shawn’s voice dripped with scorn. “But really, you’re no better than me. You’d hate working with a Good Place architect too. You’d get bored too!” 

The insult didn’t really seem to land. Michael laughed, his real laugh, which slid evil and warm down the long spine of Shawn’s true form. Shawn felt viscerally satisfied, which was odd. Michael was laughing at him. It should make him irate; it shouldn’t make him feel…inspired.

“You’re right,” Michael said. “I would.” He hesitated for a fraction of a second and then added, “also, I meant it. About trying a new way. Together.” 

“What kind of a demon are you? Keeping your word?” Shawn tried for one of his famous scowls, but the muscles on the face of his person suit didn’t seem to be cooperating. “If I had my way, you’d be demoted to a pit for all eternity.” 

“As I recall, you tried that once,” Michael said cheerily. “Didn’t go well for you at all. Now sit down. We have a neighborhood to plan.” 

“Wait,” Shawn narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Are you giving me orders? This doesn’t mean you’re my boss, right? Am I your boss then?”

“No bosses,” Michael said. “No Gods, no masters. I saw that on a t-shirt on earth once. Aren’t humans cute?” he chuckled. 

“Wait, so you mean... “ Shawn trailed off. “We’re equals then?” The word tasted funny in his mouth. He wasn’t sure he had ever used the word equal, in any way that approached sincerity, in at least a trillion years. 

“Officially, we’re Co-Architects,” Michael said, looking up at him. “Equal powers, equal say in the neighborhood, etc. Although I have a lot of ideas about ways we could use you as an authority figure to scare the humans into being better. Like, remember that time, you were the judge and I pretended to be terrified of you, oh that was fun…”

Shawn listened as Michael prattled on about one of his little scenarios. The thing was, it had been great fun actually, playing the judge, cocooning himself any time one of the humans showed some a hint of strong emotion. As much as Michael had tormented him over the past six hundred years, he meant what he had said back at Mindy St. Claire’s. It had been the most fun he had ever had. Michael was quite infuriatingly clever and could be cruel in ways Shawn would never dream of himself. He was overflowing with a kind of creativity that The Bad Place, and actually, probably the Good Place too, had been trying to stamp out since the dawn of time. He was, in short, surprising. Michael put Shawn off balance, made him want things--to beat him at his own game, to best him in front of his human friends, to rip him limb from limb or at least rip that infuriating peacock bowtie off his neck, rip the foppish intentionally disarming suit from his shoulders--with a ferocity Shawn hadn’t felt since he was naught but a baby fire slug, slipping along in a puddle of his own goo. 

“You know,” Shawn said, trying for supercilious. “I like that idea you had in reboot 189, but maybe we could try it again, this time with a kraken instead of the unicorns.” 

“Oh, yes,” Michael scribbled something down and Shawn eased himself onto the stool next to him. “And how about we pretend Janet is offline and then force them to barricade themselves in the study…”

Shawn nodded along, anticipating Michael’s next suggestion, countering it with one of his own. Only by degrees, as the sunset began, staggered amongst the four different windows, did Shawn realize that he was having An Emotion. And only when it was properly nightfall in all four of the seasons did he admit to himself that the Emotion he was having might just be Joy. 

*****

The neighborhood was going even better than expected. That’s not to say it was easy, or without missteps, however. 

“Shawn, how many times do I have to tell you,” Michael exclaimed, not hiding the exasperation in his voice, “bees with teeth gives the game away every time. Three of the humans are in a state of shock, one of them is asking too many questions, and we’re going to have to reboot and start over. Again. ” 

“What about…?” Shawn started.

“No,” Michael held up a hand. “We’ve been over this, penis bees, bees with spiders, spiders with penises, they all give the game away. Don’t you see that. Can’t you understand how, possibly, just maybe, it would be hard for humans to imagine a heaven that includes penis bees?”

“Well,” Shawn said, folding his arms, knowing he was sulking and not caring. “Hardly feels like torture if there’s no bees at all. You have no respect for tradition.” 

Michael threw his hands in the air. “For the last time, we’re not talking about torture! We’re talking about improving them, not traumatizing them! And you have no respect for creativity,” he added petulantly, sitting back down behind the desk in the architects’ office with a huff. 

Shawn paced around the room while Michael gave him the silent treatment. The silent treatment was an old standard of torture, almost as good as incessant noise for driving someone crazy. Shawn hated that it worked on him too, even as he found himself impressed by Michael’s craftsmanship. 

“Fine,” Shawn spit out eventually, “what about bees that follow them around and only sting them when they do bad things?” 

Michael sighed and put his head in his hands. “Closer,” he said, “but you know, they can’t just do good things out of fear of punishment. I’ve tried that one before and it doesn’t work.” 

“Not according to Jean Hampton’s Moral Education Theory of Punishment,” Shawn argued back.

Michael gaped at him.

“What, doinkface,” Shawn grinned at having gotten the upper hand. It was not a pleasant smile. “I read. Well, I mostly just skip to the dirty bits. But you pick things up along the way.” 

“There are no dirty bits in Philosophy and Public Affairs,” Michael said faintly. 

“Shows what you know,” Shawn smirked. “And I thought you had a good imagination. Bad Janet?”

“What up stinkbutt?” She materialized next to him, chewing gum. 

“Wanna go to a six hour long community theater production of C.A.T.S. the next neighborhood over?”

“Fork yeah,” bad Janet said, popping her gum and not looking up from her phone. 

“Catch you later, Michael,” Shawn called as he headed out the door, Bad Janet in tow. “Punishment bees, think about it!” 

****

The neighborhood was idyllic. That was the problem. Spend thousands of years toiling away in the Sulphur Pits, doing some good honest torture, and even just a mere century of green grass and blue sky and perfect weather would give any demon ideas. The idea it was currently giving Shawn was that Michael’s mouth looked very red and very soft. Must be a malfunction in his person suit. Demon mouths, as a whole, should have more teeth than that, Shawn thought. Preferably pointy ones. Demon mouths should not look so...approachable. 

They were sitting across from one another on the town green, back to an old but successful routine. Shawn was the judge again, and Michael was the architect. Quite cleverly, they had manipulated the humans into thinking they had caused a rift to open up in the neighborhood. “Oh no, The Judge will send you all to the Bad Place if he finds out!” Michael had exclaimed, backlit by the roaring inferno cutting through the fountain at the center of town. 

Shawn had watched from behind a building, then appeared on cue in a blaze of light to demand an explanation. Currently, Michael was claiming the rift was all his fault and Shawn was drawing out a public description of the tortures Michael would endure, hoping it would motivate at least one of the loathsome earth scum to confess. 

“I’ll take out your eyes first,” Shawn said. “Properly, with a corkscrew, the old fashioned way. Then I’ll feed them to dust bunnies that live between the stars. Then of course, it will be boiling lava to put in the sockets.” Shawn found he was breathless just thinking about it. “You’re immortal, so it won’t kill you of course, but it will hurt. And then at the end, I’d retire you all the same.” 

“Please, no,” Michael said, slipping out of the chair and kneeling in front of him, wringing his hands and really overdoing it, Shawn thought, on the innocent angelic Architect front. “I’ll do anything. Don’t retire me!” 

“Anything?” Shawn asked, quirking one of his eyebrows. His eyes were drawn of their own accord to Michael’s very red mouth again. The moment stretched and then--

“It was me!” A large human stood up in the back of the crowd. She was sweating profusely and looked like she was about to pass out. “It was me!” she said again. “I heard that the fountain would make me beautiful if I bathed in it at midnight on a full moon while no one was around and I came here and did and then the earth spilt open and I’m so, so, sorry, but please don’t retire Michael--”

“You,” Shawn rounded on here. “What. Did. You. Do. Tell me exactly. The punishment must fit the crime.” 

The pudgy human quaked where she stood. Shawn surprised himself by feeling irritated. This was usually the best part, when the humans went completely out of their minds with terror. This part was supposed to be his favorite. But why did she have to break so quickly? He could have easily kept going at Michael, stretched it out for an hour, days even, all the things he wanted to do to him, tortures he wanted to visit on him. He supposed he should be happy that it was working. The last time they tried this, no one had confessed, and they had needed to resort to the punishment bees in the end to get anything done. 

Later, once the humans were sufficiently terrorized and sent home to await (dread) their respective punishments, Shawn was filing a painfully dull report when Michael came into the architect’s office, grinning ear to ear. Michael pulled his bow tie loose, and sat back on the edge of the architect’s desk, across from where Shawn was messing around in the filing cabinet.

“Well, that went really well, I’d say,” he started. “Good job Shawn, for a second there, I thought you were really going to---”

Impulsively, Shawn stepped forward in between Michael’s spread thighs, leaned down, and pressed his mouth hole to Michaels. It was warm and wet. Very wet. He pulled back. 

“Um,” said Michael, eventually, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “What?”

“I was trying a human thing,” Shawn prodded at his own lips experimentally. They tingled a bit from where they had touched Michaels. “Don’t they like to mush their mouth holes together?”

“Yeah, they do.” Michael said softly. His hand came up to his own mouth, echoing Shawn’s earlier gesture. “That’s the first time I’ve tried it though.” 

“Me too,” Shawn said. 

“They eat with those mouths,” Michael said, “and then they also put them on each other. Isn’t that weird.” 

“So weird.” Shawn said, then, because he couldn’t help himself, “good-weird or bad-weird?” 

Michael prodded at his lips some more. “Good-weird I think?” he said eventually. 

“Oh,” Shawn was unaccountably disappointed. “I thought maybe it would be bad-weird. Demons ought not to do good-weird things.” Shawn was embarrassed and angry at himself for being embarrassed. As a rule, demons liked making things awkward. Was Shawn losing his touch as a demon? 

“In that case,” Michael said, not looking at him, “it was definitely bad-weird?”

“Oh,” Shawn said again, and this was better, putting Michael on the defensive. Making him the awkward one. “Oh, you want me to do it again?” He leaned further into Michael’s personal space. Michael’s thighs pressed on either side of him, solid, reassuring. “You want it that bad, Michael?” 

“Yes,” Michael said, looking straight at him. And oh no, Shawn was not prepared for that level of intensity. What was he to do with that? Michael’s hands came up and landed on Shawn’s hips, holding him stead, “Yes, I do,” Michael said. And Shawn was helpless to do anything but lean in and kiss him again. And again. 

****

So this was a thing they did now. The kissing. Usually only in the architect’s office, where the humans and other demons couldn’t see them, except on one memorable occasion that turned Michael’s face bright red and necessitated a quick push of the reset button.

They were being discrete, but it wasn’t a secret exactly. Michael’s human friends knew. Shawn had overheard them talking about it one day, and of course, being a demon, he had loitered outside the door to listen.

“But, Shawn, really…?” Tahani’s cultured voice carried across the room.

“Yes,” Michael said heavily. “I can explain. Well, I can’t really, actually, but look. We’ve known each other for a very long time.”

“But he’s been trying to kill you for the past how many thousand years? I just…I’m not getting this.” That was Chidi.

“I think, if Michael can get it, he should get it!” Elenore cut it. “Hate sex is the best sex!” Chidi made a disgruntled noise in the background. “Well, aside from true love sex,” Elenore amended. “Anyway, why not screw your demon brains out buddy! It doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to.”

“But what if I want…” Michael started, and Shawn abruptly retreated. There were some things that would traumatize even a demon to overhear.

****

“You know, there are other things you can do with penises besides flattening them,” Michael suggested one evening, apropos of nothing. Well, perhaps apropos of something. They had been practicing kissing again. They were really quite good at it by now. 

“Like chopping them off you mean?” Shawn suggested hopefully. 

“No,” Michael said reprovingly. Shawn was lying half on the couch outside the architect’s office and half on Michael, who also lying on the couch. He wasn’t quite sure how they had gotten here, but it was...nice. Warm and solid in the vee of Michael’s legs. Michael’s big hands framed his hips and he leaned up to bite sharply at Shawn’s lips. Shawn tried not to dignify that with a response, but a little moan came out anyway. 

“No, Shawn, I mean, you can have sex with penises.” 

Shawn shrugged, as much as he was able in Michael’s hold. “Humans have sex without them all the time too. Anyway, you’re a fifty foot tall fire squid and I’m a nightmare stallion with infinity wings. What do we care about how humans have sex?”

“I mean,” Michael said, “we could have sex, the human way, in our human suits, with our human penises.” 

Shawn gulped, then scowled. It wouldn’t do for Michael to see how off balance he made him. “Why would we want to do that?” Shawn tried. 

“Might feel nice,” Michael said, spreading his hands even wider on Shawn’s hips. He had very big hands, Shawn realized. Michael’s hands dipped lower, and Shawn’s hips shifted forward without any kind of permission from his higher nervous centers. 

“Hmm,” Shawn said, noncommittally, even though the penis portion of his human suit had been enthusiastically committed for quite some time now. “It’s an idea.” 

Michael leaned up to kiss him again, long and slow. Shawn had to admit, the human way felt dizzyingly good, but good in a way that was still just enough this side of forked up to allow him to admit he was into it. Sleeping together like humans? It was a very weird idea, and weird was just two steps removed from bad, throw in a few fetishes...well, he could hardly consider it a “good” sort of activity. 

“Alright,” Shawn said, trying to keep the breathiness out of his voice as Michael’s hands tightened minutely. “Yes, let’s try it. I’m only saying yes because I hate you though,” he added as an afterthought. “And I think you’ll be very bad at it and Bad Janet and I will gossip about how much you suck in bed until the end of time.” 

“Oh,” Michael said, smiling with teeth, before leaning in again. “Thank you for saying that. I hate you too Shawn. Very much.” 

Shawn considered punishing Michael for showing such emotion by zipping himself into a cocoon, then and there. But Michael’s very large hands were stroking down the curve of his spine and then his fingers were fluttering over-- 

To Shawn’s utter mortification, Michael was not, as it turned out, bad at it at all. 

****

They were sitting on a grassy hill, looking down on the humans and assorted demons milling around in the town below them. It was one of those perfect sunsets that Shawn hated. The sun fell in Michael’s white hair, turning it gold. Shawn couldn’t look at him he was so beautiful. It was days like these that made the angel charade seem less like a charade. 

“Michael, am I becoming….” Shawn paused, swallowing down his horror, “better, do you think?”

“Oh, Shawn,” Michael said, his voice deep and gentle. “I’m afraid you might be.”

“But…” Shawn hadn’t felt this disoriented since that time he took a wrong turn in the IHOP. “But...I like Janet farts and monster truck rallies and taking big shirts in public toilets even though I don’t actually have to poop, and I’ve seen every single Pirates of the Caribbean, all thirty five of them. How can I be good, Michael? I don’t want it. I don’t want it at all.” 

Michael waited for him to finish. “It’s ok, Shawn,” he said. “You can like all those things, still, and not be bad. Not be bad, really, I mean.” 

“But what am I, if I’m not bad?” Shawn felt breathless, even more undone than he usually felt around Michael, which, these days, was saying something. 

“I don’t know,” Michael said, looking him up and down slowly. “It’s scary, but I think you just have to find it out as you go.” 

Michael must correctly interpreted the look on Shawn’s face, because he said, “look if you need to, you can bleach your hair, and find some sunglasses and an earring and ask Janet for a red convertible. It worked for me.” 

“I don’t have hair,” Shawn said. “For the past two thousand years, I deliberately have had the most unattractive possible style of middle management combover ever invented by humanity.” 

“Change it up then,” Michael said. His arm was slung as a warm and comforting weight over Shawn’s shoulders, when had that happened? “Shave all your hair off or get the person suit department to find you a new one. You’re allowed to have an existential crisis. It doesn’t have to be easy, you know, getting better. In fact, if it’s easy, you’re probably doing it wrong.” 

“I don’t want to change,” Shawn said. 

“I know,” Michael said softly, “but that’s kind of how this works. Sometimes it even happens the fastest when you’re not trying. Do you really think you could go back to the old school ways now? Torturing and lava monsters and butthole spiders?” 

“Yes,” Shawn tried to say, but it wouldn’t come out. Instead he found himself saying, “you know I always admired you.” 

“Really?” Michael asked. “Even all those times you were trying to retire me or marbleize my Janet, or cast me out for all eternity?”

“Especially those times,” Shawn said, even though he knew he should stop talking. “You had such energy, such purpose. But even before that too, when I first promoted you to architect and you came up with an idea so original, so audacious, that I immediately tried to dismiss it outright and you wouldn’t let me. You think big, Michael, you’ve always thought big. Before I met you, all I ever wanted was a nice pair of thumbscrews and a senior staff pin.” 

“I don’t think that’s true,” Michael said. “You know I admired you too, from afar. For a long time, even before I joined your firm, even before you knew who I was. I meant it, your speech at Demon Con is what convinced me there had to be a better way. All this pain for all eternity and where was the gain? It was getting old. You knew it. I knew it. But you. You were the first person at Bad Place HQ who said anything about it to anyone who would listen. You told a whole room full of demons at Demon Con, but none of them understood what you were saying.” 

“And you did?” Shawn asked. 

“Not right then, no.” Michael admitted. “But you had vision. I could see that.” 

The sun was going down properly now. It was twilight on the hillside, lights in the village below winking on beneath them. 

“Maybe we should do a set-up where we’re husbands,” Michael said suddenly. “Bring in a bunch of humans who are abject failures at love and make them jealous enough they become better at relationships just to spite us.” He said it so casually, but Shawn felt the minute tremble in Michael’s arm around his shoulders. He had won, he knew. He could absolutely eviscerate Michael with just a few words. He could utterly destroy him by laughing in his face. It would have been the long con to end all long cons, the endgame to end all endgames. Shawn paused for a minute to revel in the thought of such exquisite torture, laid out like a banquet in front of him, soaked it in as Michael squirmed without trying to look like he was squirming. 

“You know,” Shawn said finally, after he had drunk his fill of the moment. “I think it has potential.” He looked Michael up and down, just a shadow in the darkness now, far more appropriately demonic now that the sun had gone down. “Husbands,” Shawn said. “I think I could get used to it.” 

And he found, as they walked down the hill, hand in hand, that this was not a lie at all.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) I dont think theres any canonical discussion of Shawn's true form (let me know if I'm wrong) but I think nightmare stallion fits
> 
> 2) I sat down at my computer yesterday, absently clicked over to AO3, said, "hmmm I wonder if there's anything under the Shawn/Michael tag after last Thursday"....and woke up 3 hours later with this fic sitting in my google docs. This story was produced in a temporary state of insanity and I take no responsibility for my actions. I cannot emphasize enough how little this was beta read, by myself or anyone else. I know there are typos, and I'm leaving them in, for that authentic Bad Place vibe, you know? Suck it doinks!
> 
> I'm trying to make fandom friends,[come say hi](https://princip1914.tumblr.com) on tumblr! I love and cherish each and every comment here too.


End file.
